PHOENIX Dance Theatre's award-winning French dancer Sandrine Monin has choreographed her debut piece for the Leeds company's latest Mixed Programme, visiting York Theatre Royal on Wednesday and Thursday at the start of a new tour.

Drawing inspiration from Charles Baudelaire's book of poems The Flowers Of Evil, Calyx explores the themes of beauty, desire and decadence, set to the music of Roberto Rusconi.

"The Calyx is the outermost part of a flower – the bud,” explains Sandrine. "It envelopes the flower, protecting it, and when it blooms it provides support for the rest of its life. I find it a fascinating and beautiful thing and have used the dancers to translate this.”

Sandrine, now 29, first read Baudelaire's book as a teenager. "It really struck me, and when I got the chance to choreograph around it, I thought, 'go for it'!" she says.

"This is my first professional commission though I have choreographed for Phoenix's youth programme and for Leeds City College, and I've also gone into schools too, where we do workshops. In fact I'll be have a workshop at the Theatre Royal on the second day we're in York."

Her commission emerged from her participation in an intensive, two-week Composer and Choreographer Lab. "After Sharon [Phoenix artistic director Sharon Watson] saw my work and liked it, she asked if I wanted to do it as part of a Mixed Programme, which is so exciting, but also mad eme nervous, but it's been amazing," says Sandrine.

"The choice of music for Calyx came from working with Roberto, who's from London, and came up to Leeds for the lab. We really got on and as soon as I got the commission, I asked him to compose for me, and there's so much freedom within that to create a piece.

"To turn the book into a piece of choreography, I read it a thousand times, and rather than whole poems, I took quotes and expressions of beauty or something absolutely horrible but in a beautiful way to express contradictory emotions and then asked the dancers to work with me in translating the quotes and themes into dance over a few weeks of  research and development.

"I like to give them my way of moving and from there I give them the liberty to express themselves and then I put it all together with a bit of me and a bit of them."

After studying in France, Sandrine's career took her to Germany for a while before her desire to "do something different, more contemporary" brought her to West Yorkshire. "I came across a video of Phoenix and I loved it: their physicality and the diversity of their work," she says.

Sandrine is now in her sixth year with Phoenix. "I feel like I've really been nurtured in the company, starting as a dancer, and the chance to choreograph was a really strong desire of mine, and Sharon has been so supportive," she says.

Calyx is one of "three, diverse, emotional and sassy dances in one thought-provoking performance", assembled by the Phoenix artistic director, "working with people from all over the world".

Sandrine will dance in the other two works, Maybe Yes Maybe, Maybe No Maybe and Beast.

Aletta Collins’s Maybe Yes Maybe, Maybe No Maybe  has a live microphone at its heart as five dancers blend movement and voices to create a witty piece, scored by Street Furniture Music, a Soho production company that specialises in music and sound design for film, television, games and theatre. In this instance, the dancers’ voices are transformed into the beats and accents of a pulsing soundtrack.

Leeds choreographer Douglas Thorpe contributes the unsettling Beast, an exploration of the dark reaches of the mind, focusing on the concept of choice and consequences that follow wrong decisions.

The right decision; however, would always be to acquire tickets for a Phoenix Dance Theatre show in York.

Phoenix Dance Theatre: Mixed Programme, TakeOver Festival, York Theatre Royal, Wednesday and Thursday, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk